"But her emails" has become a wry joke on the left. Republican fanfare over their investigations into Hillary Clinton's emails during the 2016 presidential campaign (and after) was endless. Trumpers still love chanting "Lock her up" over unspecified crimes they imagine she committed. From Benghazi to State Department emails to Uranium One to the Clinton Foundation "scandals," Fox News, of course, was Donald Trump's cheerleading squad.

The not-so-vast but relentless right wing noise machine used the same gaslighting techniques on Hillary Clinton it used against her husband, this time in support of Donald Trump. In the end, there was nothing to prosecute. "But her emails" remains the go-to distraction to keep the spotlight off Trump.

Digby posted yesterday on David Fahrenhold's Washington Post report on the buying spree Trump undertook in the years ahead of running for president. More than $400 million in nine years, Fahrenhold found. After years as the self-described "King of Debt" who bragged, "If the world goes to hell in a handbasket, I won't lose a dollar," Trump suddenly reversed course. He began buying properties, some of them money-losers, wholly with cash:

The year before he launched his campaign for president, Trump made the two most expensive all-cash purchases that The Post found in its review. In 2014, he shelled out $79.7 million for the huge golf resorts in Doonbeg, Ireland, and Turnberry, Scotland — both of which were losing money at the time.

The strategy flies in the face of convention and common sense. Trump embraced borrowing "until he didn't," Fahrenhold writes.

Which brings up Eric Trump's reported explanation for how the Trump organization got its money at a time banks quit lending to it: "We have all the funding we need out of Russia." Eric Trump now denies saying that to golf journalist James Dodson. Once again, a question arises Benghazi-like.

It took MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhl and Washington Post's David Fahrentold most of the interview yesterday to get around to mentioning Russian money, but along with suspicions of Russian money laundering (which the Post cannot prove) it was hanging in the air the entire time:

“Where on earth did they get the cash from?” the host asked Fahrenhold, who responded that he and his reporting team only know what the Trump son relayed to them — that they made enough on other business ventures to purchase the properties in cash in spite of reports about the company’s borrowing habits.

But there is an explanation that can cover all the questions arising from this mysterious mid-career course correction in how the president* did business. Perhaps someone–or several someones–needed to wash some money. A possible reason that Mueller’s people are looking into this kind of maneuvering is that they suspect the Trump Organization was laundering money for the kind of people who need their money laundered.

#ButhisCashDeals

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